Yet another thread bashing alt coins.
Welcome to the free market. Even more funny is not one person is forcing you to invest time nor money onto any of these coins. Isnt that great? If more alts is what people want, by golly, give it to them. That is what free market is all about, and it also draws newbs into the mix. If it was not for an alt, which i have as my avi here, and owe many thanks to, I would not be here still mining let alone invested a few K into mining.
Anyways, you are not gonna get much sympathy form me. Your not going to change NOTHING so you might as well get that into your head.
I am not bashing alt-coins. But, when I see something I don't understand, I want to understand it, rather than dismiss it or ignore it... or worse, hate or resent it. I've invested actually money into Devcoin/Dogecoin. I mined 6.22 Litecoin and quit after a seeing my electric bill hit $130, having spent several hundred dollars upgrading my Dell computer to mine them more efficiently.
I was pleased that my interest in Litecoin seemingly paid off, when Litecoins went up from $3/ea, to $40/ea. I had over $220 at one point! I was literally squealing with glee! Then it all came crashing down... bummer.
I'm investing into Devcoin/Dogecoin because they are so fractionally low! I figure, if they even hit a mere $1.00 and I own a lot of them, I could be fairly well off! This is all based on the people who became millionaires, owning hundreds or a thousand or more of Bitcoins, when it hit $1,200/ea.
So, I'm not doing it for pure "fun" (I don't have enough "expendable income" to throw at "fun"), but more financial reasons.
However, I also wouldn't mind seeing this experiment in "alternative currency" hit it's stride and it becomes a real thing, not just a new fad. I believe Bitcoin/Litecoin are definitely legit opportunities. But where do Devcoin/Dogecoin (or others) fit, in the grand scheme of things?
Devcoin seems legitimate in it's direction... to give to Developers. Open source initiatives, etc. However, is Dogecoin just a cute, short-term fad? Well, it doesn't have to be...
What if it were a currency that you could use to buy pet supplies? Or help animal shelters? Or a dozen other animal-oriented things? In other words, let the Shibe Inu be the representative of all animals! Domesticated and wild! Give this coin some real, legitimate direction!
The question is... how do you buy things with Dogecoin, that must first be bought with real dollars? How does a business find USE in Dogecoin, so they are willing to accept it, since they can then buy other things (to sell) with it? How does a VIRTUAL currency gain legitimate traction in a REAL world that is based on buying/selling in Dollars/Euros. How does the realm of the virtual currency find it's OWN space in this world?
Or is it simply a matter of changing people's minds towards the intangible and making it worth more than the bits and bytes of it's existence? I mean, people once traded stones and shells and beads for money... is this just a matter of getting enough people interested and willing to trade "something" for "something else", once again?
In summary, I don't want to invest into something that won't give me something in return. Pool mining Dogecoin is fun, agreed. But at some point, my electricity bill will go up and I'll have to decide at what time to stop. "Fun" doesn't pay the electric bill. I could no longer afford to keep mining Litecoins. The hobby became too expensive. Then Litecoins skyrocketed and my investment looked like it was paying off. Will it return to that level or go beyond? Who knows. But I want to be able to say investing into these coins was actually worthwhile, in the end.